


That Which Is Lost

by redeem147



Category: Watchmen (Comic)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-19
Updated: 2011-10-19
Packaged: 2017-10-24 18:31:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redeem147/pseuds/redeem147
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Siloutte's lover looks back on their life. Written for Heroine's Fest 2011.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Which Is Lost

She was born in a little town in Austria with a long name. I wish I could remember it. She told me, of course, but it was a long time ago. And my memory is far from what it used to be.

Her parents married her off as was the tradition. Not to some fat, old, wrinkled merchant, though maybe it would have been easier for her. No, he was tall and young and considered handsome. The problem, of course, was that he was a man. And when she couldn't give him what he wanted, he would beat her.

That's when she learned to fight back.

She was fifteen.

In the mid-nineteen thirties Hitler had not yet taken over Austria, but it was obvious the way Germany was headed. Another few years and she would have ended up in a camp, or an oven, so when she ran from her husband she was running for her life in more ways than one. She told me about some of it, what she went through. Lying about her identity, her religion. Finally getting into Italy, just before Mussolini joined the Axis, hiding on a cargo ship and finally making her way to New York. Learning English on the way.

By late 1938 she had fake papers and a new life. In 1939, everyone knew her name. Sillouette.

I read about her, how she took out that child pornographer. I think it had something to do with her father, the anger. Things she never told me, but I could see it in her eyes. I asked her about her family and she would draw into herself. Get cold. I finally stopped asking.

Anyway, the picture that went with the newspaper article was stunning. Tall, lithe woman, dressed all in black, though I later found out the cummerbund was red. Dark hair cropped in a page boy style. Confident smile. I didn't fall in love with her, nothing like that. It was a photograph. But I clipped it out and put it in my album with all the other costumed heroes. Every day it seemed like there was another one. Nite Owl, Dollar Bill, Silk Spectre. She was beautiful too, I guess, but there always seemed to be something tacky about her. Not elegant like my Ursula.

When I met Ursula Zandt she was already a member of The Minutemen. You remember them, that first group of American heroes who were so big in the early forties? In the great scheme of things they weren't a team all that long but for that little bit of time they were like gods to us. We felt, well, safe. But they weren't like real people, with real names. They didn't go to the supermarket or get runs in their stockings.

Which is funny, because that's exactly how I met her. I was in Macy's buying a pair of those new nylons when that nutcase Harridan came swinging through with a machine gun, shooting at shoppers. I'd like to say I was strong and stood up to her, but to tell the truth I screamed and ducked under a table. Next thing I know, a velvet glove is reaching down to help me up and I see that crazy old biddy decked out on the floor. And I looked up into the most beautiful pair of chocolate brown eyes I'd ever seen.

“You okay, sweetheart?” I couldn't answer. It was her of course. Sillouette. And she'd taken my breath away. I should have just thanked her, she should have just gone on to catch the next bad guy.

But she didn't. We went back to my apartment. I'd always laughed at the idea of love at first sight, but she saw something in me that I'd never seen. Did things to me that no woman had ever done. I don't mean physical things. I mean the way she touched my heart.

That should have been the end, right? The happy ending. Real life may have gotten more unreal, with super villains and costumed heroes, but still it was no fairy tale.

Every time she left the apartment I'd worry about her, wondering if I'd ever see her again. Wonder if some bad guy would be badder than her. And I'd get a little jealous too, mostly of Sally Jupiter. All that animosity had to have a little spark of something under it, I'd think.

Some nights I'd cry for her, because she was so open in who she was. No mask. No real attempt to hide that Sillouette was Urs. But the one person she said she loved the most, me, she had to hide in the shadows. I'd weep for her, and I'd weep for myself.

We went on like this for years. She kept her own place and I'd see her less and less often, not because we were winding down but because it was getting harder and harder to keep us on the QT. I wanted to meet her friends, to share that part of her life with her, but she'd just laugh. A strained laugh. She wanted it too.

Then a photographer snapped our photo and it all came out.

She told her team it had been a gag. A fun little kiss because the war was over. I think they actually bought it for a while, probably because they wanted to, but the reporters kept digging. They found out all the details.

Less than a year after the end of the war and The Minutemen turfed her out of their crimefighter's club. Because of me. Because they couldn't face that one of their own could love another woman, and maybe more because she'd kept it from them for such a long time.

She got bitter. She missed them. She started drinking. Started saying some pretty hurtful things.

Took a swing at me.

I left.

I love her. Even now.

A few months later I opened the paper and there it was. She was gone, shot down in her own apartment with some other woman. Even in black and white, blood stains.

If I could only have another day...


End file.
